Interviews : “Xen is believing…” – an interview with A Million Dead Birds Laughing

Melbourne’s A Million Dead Birds Laughing really stand out from the crowd with their quirky style of deathgrind, and consistently intense live shows. March 2011 saw the band release their debut album Force Fed Enlightenment, and this year we will hear its follow-up, Xen. Just prior to their last show until that new album and tour (details at the very bottom), we had a bit of a chat with guitarist Ben Boyle.

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So you’re working on album number two at the moment. How far into it are you?

Yes indeed. We’ve just finished tracking this past weekend; so we have mixing coming up over the Easter Weekend and Mastering shortly after that. It’s being produced, mixed and engineered by Sam Johnson at Three Phase Studios and we’re super happy with it so far. We’ve spent a lot more time on capturing the best quality sounds we can, as opposed to Force Fed Enlightenment which was recorded and mixed in a whopping 5 days or so haha.

The album is entitled ‘Xen’ and it is Part II of the AMDBL alphabet (Force Fed Enlightenment being Part I). The two albums are kind of counterparts to each other; sort of a ‘yin yang’ – This also reflects in the production of the album and the art.

We will hopefully have pre-orders for physical copies available soon; we’re releasing it ourselves this time and will also have it available for free download after release. So keep an eye out for more announcements relating to that!

Can we get any hints to what tracks it will include?

Tracks to be included are:

Nest
Beast
Goliath
Terminal
Jackal
Hydra
King
Quantum
Ulcer
Spirit
Xen
Yeti
Zombie

So everyone who keeps asking for King… you’ll have it, very soon!

And I gather there’ll be a somewhat extensive tour to celebrate it?

Definitely. We’re in the planning stages at the moment; the official album release and tour will probably kick off sometime in June. We’re hoping to play as much as possible and hit some places we didn’t on the last tour, such as Perth and some smaller regional places. We’re also hoping to head over to New Zealand and if all goes to plan, we’d love to tour Japan (if anyone can help us with this; let us know!)

Do you already have ideas and material for releases after that one?

After this album; we already have an EP written and ready to go; we’ve already played a couple of the tracks live. It is a concept EP and is a pretty big project for us, but I won’t give too much away yet. Other than the EP, we have another album in the works which is also conceptual and possibly the biggest thing I’ve ever taken on as a musician, it is about a quarter way through being written and is based on the Tarot; we may give a sneak peek at more of this material on the next tour… maybe.

The new six-ish minute track “Equilibrium” that you have been performing live seems to be unanimously loved. How far away are we from hearing that one recorded?

Equilibrium is a very special song for us; or at least for me personally. I’m glad people are digging it. It actually kicks off the middle chapter of the Tarot project; it’s a significant track and it pretty much sums up where we are at the moment; musically and otherwise. It’s been recorded in Demo form which turned out really well; we were actually discussing releasing it as a small online demo/mcd with some other new and reworked material from Force Fed Enlightenment. But at this stage we figure it would only distract from Xen, so… maybe later. The album that contains Equilibrium will be released next year. The EP will hopefully at least be recorded by the end of 2012. We really want to keep up the momentum…

Should we expect more longer songs in the future? Is that the way the writing is heading?

Not exactly; certain songs are longer but its usually for a reason, if a song is longer it generally means the idea or message behind the song is bigger; as the themes we are covering in future releases is a lot more complex and a lot grander; so it makes sense that the songs follow suit. We generally discuss the full plan for an album or release before I even start writing, which helps a lot, Adam also provides artwork sometimes, so I have a lot to draw on. We’ll always have our approach to being short and to the point; but every now and then we like to wonder off and jam a little… its fun. So expect more surprises in future; the material is always evolving.

It wasn’t actually drawn from any specific source; I came up with the name when I first began working on the material; it seemed to describe the band and capture the ominous feeling we were after. It is dark and foreboding but also eccentric and kind of funny. I guess it kind of gives the sense that the birds know something we don’t about the beyond and can’t help but laugh at us. But everyone tends to have their own view of it; I’m open to any interpretation. It just sums us up.

You travelled up to Canberra not too long ago for the Chaos A.C.T. festival. How’d that whole trip go? I’m somewhat annoyed I couldn’t make it up there, especially with The Schoenberg Automaton playing on of their last shows with Col on vocals.

CHAOS A.C.T was a lot of fun. We were genuinely surprised that we were so well received by Canberra since we’d never played there before and a lot of people were familiar with our stuff and sang along; was very cool. The Schoenberg Automaton are incredible, we love playing with those guys, really looking forward to the album. CHAOS was the last time we got to see Col perform with them; it was amazing as always.

You also play in Malignus and relatively new project Vipassi. What’s happening with those two at the moment?

Vipassi is just writing a lot, it’s a relatively slow process as the material so far captures a certain flow and vibe that we’re keen to keep up. But that means waiting for the right material; we definitely aren’t fans of forcing things to happen so it will come together at its own pace.

Malignus have no bass player, so if anyone wants to have a crack, let us know! We’re still moving forward though; we pretty much have a full album ready to go so I guess we’ll see what happens.

What other local bands have you been listening to lately?

Been listening to new In Trenches (Sol Obscura) quite a bit which is amazing, other than that, Aussie bands on semi regular rotation are Anchors, Stockades, Extortion, Smith Street Band, Fat Guy Wears Mystic Wolf Shirt, Psycroptic, Seekae, The Mung, Jezabels, Encircling Sea, I Exist, The Kill, Alarum, Hawaiian Islands, Iconic Vivisect, Jack Ladder and the Dreamlanders, Nuclear Summer etc etc…

Last words for your fans?

Keep an eye on our Facebook for updates on the album release and tour announcements: http://www.facebook.com/amdbl

We’re hoping to have it out mid-late June 2012.

Xen is believing…

You can catch A Million Dead Birds Laughing live at the following show…